My top list of quotes and ideas on fear:
- Fear = False Evidence Appearing Real
- “Fearlessness is a divine quality. What is fear? Is is an imaginary zero; it is maya’s deception. It is a mental delusion. Is is a negative modification that arises in the mind-lake when one forgets his real, divine nature. It is a whirlpool that emanates from the citta (mind) when one has lost his power of vicara (enquiry) and discrimination. It is the dark wave that proceeds from the ocean of antahkarana (mind) when one has intense attachment to the body.
- Friends, there is nothing to fear really. Fear is due to acceptance of suggestion. Victory over fear really means victory over the thing that we fear. We attract to ourselves the very things we are afraid of. That is the universal law of nature. You need not be afraid of anything else in this world save fear itself.” ~ Swami Sivananda
- “Of things some are in our power, and others are not… examine it by the rules which you possess, and by this first and chiefly, whether it relates to the things which are in our power or to the things which are not in our power: and if it relates to anything which is not in our power, be ready to say, that it does not concern you.” ~ Epictetus from The Enchiridion
- “…I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” ~ Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke (translation by M.D. Herter Norton)